Vandana Khanna

Bio

Born in New Delhi, India and raised in Falls Church, Virginia, Vandana Khanna earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her MFA from Indiana University, where she was the recipient of the Yellen Fellowship in poetry. Her first collection, Train to Agra, won the Crab Orchard Review First Book Prize and her second collection, Afternoon Masala, was the co-winner of the Miller Williams Arkansas Poetry Prize. Vandana’s work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in journals such as Crazyhorse, Callaloo, The Missouri Review, 32 Poems and The Indiana Review, as well as the anthologies Asian American Poetry: The Next Generation and Indivisible: An Anthology of Contemporary South Asian American Poetry. She has taught English and Creative Writing at colleges and universities across the country including Indiana University, Pitzer College and the University of Southern California.

Books

Afternoon Masala

Between Bollywood action stars and aging starlets, vegetable vendors and child brides, the poems in Afternoon Masala describe the struggle of finding a place in the world to call home. Starting in the heated streets of Delhi and traveling through movie theaters and sound stages to kitchens and living rooms, the poems recreate a family’s immigration story, spotlighting the often troubled transformation from childhood to womanhood, from immigrant to American. Filled with songs, spices and mantras, Afternoon Masala embraces new worlds and old rivers, lost landscapes and love letters. Here both travelers and daughters alike reject their predetermined destinies for the distinct pleasures of a Hindi film, an unruly garden, a long-forgotten language.

Train to Agra

Calling upon two cultures, Train to Agra meditates on the effects of displacement and expatriation on the construction of a young Indian American woman’s identity. The physical journeys undertaken by the speaker reflect her inner journey from immigrant child to Indian American woman, struggling to find her place between India and America, Krishna and Jesus, samosas and hamburgers. Traveling through her reflections on childhood, fate, faith, death, and belonging, she comes to accept her reality as a construct of lived memories and wished-for fantasies.